


Only a signal shown

by kawuli



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Post-Relationship, Pre-Relationship, act 2 finale alt-pov, both i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 11:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15862788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kawuli/pseuds/kawuli
Summary: Less than a full day ago they had been fighting deranged Templars in the Undercity over a few Qunari deaths. Fenris had watched as the Viscount turned to Hawke for advice. The hesitation in his voice and every line of his body would have been unthinkable in a magister. Fenris found it deeply unsettling to see the leader of the city so uncertain, even if Hawke was steady as ever. He’d gone home tense, frustrated, and very much in need of a drink, but barely had time to clean up before Bodhan had pounded at his door, out of breath, and told him to meet Hawke in Lowtown. Right away.And now it was over, and Leandra Hawke was dead, and Fenris was going back to scrub blood off his skin again, joined this time with ash and dust and whatever lyrium-laced filth came from the mage’s Void-born creatures.





	Only a signal shown

The room fell quiet, finally, the last sounds of Leandra’s breath (was it really her breath?) stuttering out. Hawke stayed frozen in place, cradling her mother’s head, until suddenly she stood up in one quick furious motion, and walked out without saying a word.

Fenris exhaled, looked at Varric, who still held Bianca in his arms like the crossbow was somehow a comfort. Couldn’t look anywhere near Anders, not when once again magic had broken something—someone—he cared about.

Varric sighed, stowed his crossbow and looked around. “I’ll go tell Aveline,” he said, “The Guard will need to do something about this mess.”

Fenris nodded, still unable to find words. “Can I—“ Anders started, paused, then, “How can I help?”

“Blondie, best thing you can do right now is keep your head down. There’s about to be a lot of angry people looking for mages down here.”

Fenris felt his hands clench to fists, and he stared at his feet so he wouldn’t see the mage walk past him and away. If he saw Anders’ face, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep himself from punching it, or worse. The markings on his skin flared with Fenris’ fury, searing him with cold fire along every line. He forced his hands to open, his jaw to unclench, and the fire faded.

Varric was watching him. “Go get cleaned up,” he said, “and then see if she’ll talk to you. Maker knows she won’t let anyone else get close enough to try.”

Fenris wanted to protest, to tell Varric that he’d left her, there wasn’t any reason Hawke would want to see him and plenty of reasons he should stay away. But then he realized: the real reason he didn’t want to go was because he couldn’t stand the idea of walking into that room again, not after he’d fled like a panicked horse from the best night he could remember.

Fenris might be a coward, but he wasn’t going to make himself a liar by coming up with pathetic excuses. If Varric thought Hawke would want him, he would go.

Varric just watched, until Fenris took a deep breath, let it out and nodded. “Alright,” he said.

“Good,” Varric said. “Let’s go.”

It was still dark and cool as Fenris walked toward his house. Still late at night, still light and noise spilling out of the Hanged Man as he strode past, still the same indifferent city. Less than a full day ago they had been fighting deranged Templars in the Undercity over a few Qunari deaths. Fenris had watched as the Viscount turned to Hawke for advice. The hesitation in his voice and every line of his body would have been unthinkable in a magister. Fenris found it deeply unsettling to see the leader of the city so uncertain, even if Hawke was steady as ever. He’d gone home tense, frustrated, and very much in need of a drink, but barely had time to clean up before Bodhan had pounded at his door, out of breath, and told him to meet Hawke in Lowtown. Right away.

And now it was over, and Leandra Hawke was dead, and Fenris was going back to scrub blood off his skin again, joined this time with ash and dust and whatever lyrium-laced filth came from the mage’s Void-born creatures.

When he got to Hawke’s mansion, Bodhan let him in. “She’s upstairs,” he said quietly. “I’m glad you’ve come.”

Fenris wasn’t sure how to react to that, beyond bewilderment, but Bodhan didn’t seem to mind, just watched as he climbed the stairs, legs heavy with more than just the exhaustion of the fight. He would not let himself slow down, but each step seemed harder than the last, like he was walking through a poisoned fog.

He stopped in the doorway, unsure of his welcome. Hawke was sitting on the bed, elbows on her knees, staring down at her hands. She didn’t look up. Her hair was wet, had dripped onto the robe she was wearing. She wasn’t crying.

Fenris made a point of treading heavily as he stepped into the room. Hawke looked up, but otherwise didn’t move.

“I—don’t know what to say,” he said, feeling like an idiot. “But I am here.” He sat next to her, almost close enough to touch. The inch of air between their hips, between their shoulders felt solid as a hardwood shield.

“I couldn’t save her,” Hawke said, finally. Her voice was low, choked and hoarse. “I couldn’t save any of them.”

“I’m sorry,” Fenris said. Hawke looked at him—at his knees anyway, rather than hers.

“It’s my fault they’re gone.” It wasn’t a question.

Fenris wanted to snarl, to blame mages and magic, the ancient magisters who’d created the darkspawn in the first place, any one of half a dozen people more at fault than Hawke. Instead he looked at her, tried to think of anything that might be comforting, and gave up. “I’m not the one to go to for absolution.”

She glanced at him, then looked back down without quite meeting his eyes. For the first time since he’d known her, she looked…vulnerable. Not fragile like glass but brittle, like a sword quenched too quickly. A sword like any other until it struck another length of good hard steel—and snapped or shattered, leaving the one who wielded it weaponless and vulnerable.

He didn’t want to be the strike that shattered her, and he didn’t know what weakness any words of his might hit. Didn’t know how to swallow bitterness and give her the comfort she wanted.

So he sat, silent, for a few more interminable moments, then stood up to leave. He paused at the door to her room, but she did not call him back.

 

The next night, he woke up so suddenly he had to think before he realized what had awakened him. The front door, half off its hinges, the lock mangled and never replaced, scraping open and then shut. Footsteps. He grabbed his sword and stepped out onto the stairs, ready to kill whoever Denarius had finally sent—and stopped.

Hawke was standing in the middle of the floor, one eyebrow raised. Fenris lowered his sword. “What are you doing here?” he asked, irritation slipping out before he remembered the room of nightmares, the patchwork woman with a familiar face. He set the sword down and walked down the stairs. “Hawke?”

She shrugged, managed a shadow of amusement. “Couldn’t sleep. Figured maybe I could get you to knock me out.”

Fenris blinked. “You broke into my house in the middle of the night to ask me to fight you.”

“Yeah,” she said, shrugging out of her cloak.

“Why me?” Fenris asked. He shouldn’t be arguing, but the damn woman scared him out of bed in the middle of the night and nothing made sense.

“Because anyone else would want to talk, and I thought you might just skip that, but maybe I was wrong.”

Fenris shook his head. “Sure, why not,” he said, “I’m awake anyway.”

She lunged at him, and suddenly it made sense. Fury and guilt and bone-deep yearning for things to not be as they were—Fenris was familiar with that knot of emotions—how they could lodge in your chest and make it hard to even breathe. Of course Hawke wanted something to fight.

She was off-balance though, a half-breath slow to react, reckless to the point of stupidity, and Fenris had to work as hard to not hurt her badly as he usually did to fend her off. Finally, despite his efforts, his fist connected with her jaw and she stumbled back. She opened and closed her mouth, rolled her neck and stepped up like she wanted to start again.

“Hawke…” Fenris said, and she stopped, looked at him. Her eyes were hard, defiant, but then she looked down and her whole body seemed to sag.

He thought she might fall. That was his excuse anyway. But once he had his arms around her he couldn’t do anything but pull her against his chest.

She stiffened for only a moment, then her head dropped to his shoulder, and she clung.

And that was good, wonderful even, but Hawke spent her days swinging swords around—she was heavy. The very last thing Fenris wanted was for the both of them to topple over and split their skulls on the cracked tiles. He looked around, managed to back up until his back was against the banister, and it wasn’t comfortable but at least he wouldn’t fall.

And with that worry out of the way he noticed her breath against his neck, fast from the fight, then harsh, shaky, and he felt her tears soak his shirt.

She pulled back before long, swiped her hands roughly across her face, turned away.

“You don’t have to go,” Fenris gritted out.

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Yeah,” she said, her voice blurred with tears. “I do.”

She walked out, and Fenris stayed frozen in place, watching her go.

Hawke came more nights than not for those next few weeks. But her guard was back up, tears unimaginable when she bared her teeth in fierce satisfaction, landing a fist just below his sternum. She seemed to be avoiding him otherwise, and he’d have been hurt by that except that she was avoiding everyone. When Fenris did see her, it was for quick jobs, in and out, done and dusted. She fought as well as ever but kept her mouth shut, blue eyes icy, face drawn and pale, hands always touching a weapon—if not her sword then the dagger at her belt, or the knife from her boot flipping between her fingers.

When he heard rumors that she was sleeping with Isabela he was jealous, there was no denying that, but even more he was relieved. Hawke needed someone, and if Isabela made an unlikely comforter, well, so did he. Hawke came to him to fight, went to Isabela to fuck, killed bandits, kept trying to fix the entire city. Fenris wasn’t sure what a person was supposed to do, faced with the cascade of loss that Hawke had endured. Perhaps Aveline thought she should be talking, or Sebastian thought she should pray, but Fenris was skeptical of both. Hawke was upright, moving around, smiled occasionally, and in daylight at least she appeared largely unchanged. That seemed to be all anyone could hope for.

 

* * *

 

Fenris felt a spark of anger when he answered a knock on the door one evening to find Hawke and Isabela standing next to each other on his doorstep. It threatened to catch and flame when Isabela explained why they wanted his help.

Her stupid relic, and she was dragging Hawke into it now? Did she not see how tired Hawke was, how even now her fingers rested on the hilt of her dagger, her weight shifting, eyes checking every corner?

“Alright,” he said, sharper than he’d intended to. “But only because I don’t want Hawke getting herself killed.”

Hawke looked at him then, and smiled a little, though her eyes stayed hard. “Good. We’ll pick up Varric on the way.”

And then Isabela left. Without a word, just a scrawled note tucked into a dead man’s armor. Hawke read it out in a flat, dull voice, then sighed. “Come on, we should go find Aveline and deal with her Qunari mess.”

“It’ll keep till morning,” Varric said. “I’d rather deal with them in daylight.”

Hawke shook her head. “Aveline said it’s urgent. Let’s go.”

It wasn’t surprising that the Arishok attacked—the surprise was that he had waited so long. The Qunari were simply behaving as they always did. But Fenris was shocked by the suddenness of it all, when Hawke and Aveline raced out to meet him on the suddenly empty street. The witch had found them, somehow, and was babbling to Varric about how awful! and but why and all manner of other inanities. At least Anders had a brain in his skull, twisted though it was. Merrill seemed to have misplaced hers, or never had one, or living in the woods with the holier-than-thou Dalish had caused it to atrophy. Or maybe her demon took it.

He had to admit, grudgingly, that she was useful. As they fought their way through Lowtown, the lightning she conjured up, along with Varric’s well-placed crossbow bolts, made his and Hawke’s work a little less impossible. Hawke charged ahead sword-first and oblivious to everything from the columns of smoke rising all around the burning city to the massive Qunari spears denting her armor. By the time they met up with the First Enchanter and the Knight-Commander, they were all tired, adrenaline pushing them forward regardless. So Fenris wasn’t surprised when Hawke didn’t even pretend to have any patience for Meredith and Orsino’s bickering. Still, he couldn’t have expected this. Her jaw set, Hawke glared at perhaps the two most powerful people in the city and snarled that she was taking charge. And apart from a little token bickering, they followed her.

 

They finally had a moment to pause once they’d actually reached the Keep, fought off one last attack, and turned toward the noise filtering out of the Viscount’s throne room. Fenris looked at Hawke. She was filthy, blood-spattered, bleeding from her left arm and her right wrist, eyes focused on something in the distance.

“Hawke,” Varric broke the quiet, tossed Hawke a jar of something. It smelled like elfroot, and she glared at Varric, who looked calmly back at her until she drank most of it, smeared a little on the bleeding wounds, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were sharper, and her face regained a bit of color. Still, this was Hawke near the end of her endurance—even if with Hawke that left a core of sharpened steel. Fenris swore under his breath, cursed the Qunari and the Knight-Commander and Isabela and the First Enchanter, Hawke’s damned overdeveloped sense of responsibility that drove them all here. But here they were, and none of them ever considered turning back.

Hawke shoved open the double doors and they walked into the throne room, met by horrified gasps and shocked silence. The Viscount’s crown spun like a coin and settled, the head that had held it lay on the carpet, and the Arishok stood at the front of the room. Here was a true leader, with none of the Viscount’s hesitance. This was a show of real power. No one in Kirkwall could compare.

And yet Hawke was unafraid, snapping off smartmouthed responses as though she were bickering with her useless uncle, not a leader of warriors. Hawke was unafraid, but Fenris was terrified. He cursed himself for unexpected cowardice, then realized: he wasn’t afraid for himself. He was afraid for her. Fool woman, she would get herself killed, and then what would he do? Just the realization was frightening. He had not dared to admit to himself how important she was, but faced with the idea of losing her, he could not, would not imagine it. The Arishok’s sword, balanced easily on his shoulder, drew his attention relentlessly. He knew well what a Qunari blade could do to any human caught in its path. Fenris looked for escape routes, but the only way out was the door they came in by, and it was closed now, and heavily guarded. They were trapped here.

And then a Qunari sword swung towards him, pulling his attention away from Hawke and back to the much less complicated task of not getting killed.

 

“You are basalit-an after all.” The Arishok’s words rang in the silence. Did Hawke know the honor she had been paid? Fenris had met only one man who could claim that, and if even half the stories about him were true, the man had practically defeated a Tevinter army by himself. But what would Hawke know of Qunari titles? Not much apparently, because her posture didn’t change at all, nothing to acknowledge the Arishok or the honor.

The tension in the room was reaching a breaking point when the door was kicked open and Isabela stepped through.

Now Hawke’s shoulders sagged a little, she shifted to stand more comfortably, teased Isabela mildly for the sudden attack of conscience. She was relieved. But Fenris didn’t think it would be as easy as that—and it wasn’t.

Being a Qunari prisoner… Isabela would be lucky to die, and dying quickly would not be an option. She was a thief and a cheat and an unrepentant liar, but Hawke liked her, and Hawke had already lost so many people—probably that was why she helped Isabela find the damn book in the first place. Hawke didn’t just let people go. He knew that better than most.

So of course Hawke agreed to a duel. She couldn’t give Isabela up, didn’t want to risk getting others killed in a chaotic, messy fight, and she had always been reckless. This, though, seemed suicidal.

Fenris didn’t often get to watch Hawke fight. Usually he was fighting with her, where he knew her enough to know where her sword would be, or against her, where he was too busy dodging her fists to study her technique. But now, watching helplessly, his sword sheathed, he was amazed at how she moved, quick and brutal, her sword striking hard blows that would leave anyone but an armored Qunari sliced to pieces.

She was good, but so was the Arishok, not to mention bigger and stronger and well-rested, and he was getting his hits in. An axe blow that dented her breastplate and left her gasping for breath. A slice into one arm, deep, blood seeping out black and thick as tar. They circled and circled; attack, parry, defend, charge, dodge… and an elbow jabbed into his hip.

“Breathe, elf,” Varric said, when Fenris glanced down, annoyed.

Fenris sucked in a deep breath, blew it out. Tried to stay calm. Tried not to loathe Isabela, mostly failed. Watched Hawke.

Both fighters were moving more slowly, both of them out of breath, both bleeding.

And then finally, _finally_ , Hawke found an opening and thrust her blade deep into the Arishok’s stomach. He staggered back, and she pulled the blade out and up, letting his weight help open a wide, ugly gash in his abdomen that poured a thick river of blood.

Hawke leaned on her sword, chest heaving, as the rest of the Qunari filed past her and out, straightened as the Knight-Commander and the First Enchanter came running in, as shouts and cheers filled the room—

And Fenris could wait no longer. He went to her side, and she hesitated only a moment before half-collapsing into him.

 

In the end it was Aveline who carried Hawke home, Anders who raced into the room with half his clinic in his pockets, Varric who set about finding water and broth for Hawke, whiskey for the rest of them. No one left: they all sat around Hawke’s bed while Anders fussed, while she drank Orana’s bone broth, while she slid into sleep, helped by something Anders did with his hands that none of the others saw but that hummed with enough magic that Fenris’ markings burned. Mages.

And then Anders stepped back, looked around the room as though he’d just noticed the audience. “She’ll sleep for a while,” he said. “But she’ll be alright.”

Aveline looked at Varric, who nodded. “We should let her rest,” she said. “Come on.”

The others started to head out, but Fenris didn’t move. “Fenris?” Merrill asked, “Are you coming?”

Fenris just glared at her until Varric put a hand to Merrill’s back and steered her toward the door, saying something Fenris didn’t bother trying to hear.

 

Silence, finally. For the first time in…too long. Quiet enough to hear Hawke breathe, snoring faintly because she’d broken her nose again. Her armor had been replaced by bandages around her chest, covering the bruises that lingered even once Anders had knit together the broken ribs underneath. Foolish, _foolish_ woman, how had she managed to survive even this?

He meant to stay until she woke up, he really did, but sometime after the second hour he fell asleep himself. When he jerked awake he was furious, at himself for sleeping when he should have been alert, at Hawke for being reckless and stupid, at Isabela for causing the whole mess, at Anders because if he was such a good healer why was Hawke still so battered?

He looked around the room, unchanged from that night, that one night he couldn’t undo, couldn’t fix, couldn’t make right, and was disgusted. He had no right to be here. She wouldn’t want to see him when she woke. He was being a fool, again.

Fenris took a last long look at Hawke, convinced himself she really was still alive, then walked out.

**Author's Note:**

> "angsty porcupine and reluctant hero who has plenty of spikes of her own fight their way into something like a relationship" is a good trope.


End file.
